Former Oracle official to take over open source tools organization The Eclipse Foundation’s board of directors next week will formally name former Oracle executive Mike Milinkovich as executive director of the open source tools foundation.The foundation recently was formed in an effort to make the open source tools platform more independent of its founder, IBM. Previously a vice president of Oracle technical services, Milinkovich will focus on building the Eclipse Foundation membership; overseeing the launch of the upcoming Eclipse 3.0 release this summer; and building upon the WebTools project, which extends Eclipse on the Java server side. Milinkovich also will form an Eclipse management organization.“I’m very excited to take this challenge on,” Milinkovich said on Thursday. “I think Eclipse has done an excellent job to date in getting presence in the marketplace.” While major companies such as Oracle and IBM participate in Eclipse, Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, and Microsoft do not. Milinkovich said he would be open to having them join.“I’m willing to talk to them whenever they’re willing to talk,” Milinkovich said. Their participation could make for development of more products on top of Eclipse as well as better integration, he said.Eclipse 3.0, meanwhile, will feature a refresh of the Eclipse Java toolset, focusing on look and feel improvements. Also planned for the release is a C language development toolset and introduction of a rich client framework for building rich client applications in Java using Simple Widget Toolkit. Prior to working at Oracle, Milinkovich worked at WebGain, a founding member of Eclipse. Software DevelopmentDevelopment ToolsTechnology IndustrySmall and Medium Business